The Case of the Shipwrecked Tree by John R. Erickson

Author:John R. Erickson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: cowdog, Hank the Cowdog, John R. Erickson, John Erickson, ranching, Texas, dog, adventure, mystery, Hank, Drover, Pete, Sally May
Publisher: Maverick Books, Inc.
Published: 2015-05-06T19:24:54+00:00

See, I’d planned it this way all along. No kidding. After he had made such a joke out of my mis­fortune, I had plotted a way of getting my revenge, and he had walked right into my clever trap. No kidding. And it served him right.

Anyway, Alfred and Drover had walked down the hill, and I joined them. Alfred had plopped down on the ground and was in the process of removing his—oh, so that was it! You remember that business of the wooden leg? It wasn’t real, just a thing made out of plastic. He had doubled up his left leg, see, and tied the thing on with leather straps.

I had, uh, noticed that right away, the very minute he’d walked out on the porch. Honest.

“It’s too much twouble,” he explained. “And besides, you can’t cwimb a twee wiff a wooden weg.”

Well, yes, that made sense. But why did he need to climb a tree? I mean, why would a pirate . . .

I soon found out, and it turned out to be a pretty good idea. See, he borrowed an old sheet from his momma, climbed up into a tree, and tied the sheet to a couple of tree limbs, making a sail. Up in a fork of the tree, Alfred’s dad had nailed some one-by-six-foot boards to the limbs, giving us a “deck.” And suddenly we had ourselves a real, genuine sailing ship! Pretty slick, huh?

That done, he turned a stern gaze on me and Drover. “Okay, doggies, we’re fixing to sail our ship, and we’re gonna find some buried tweasure!”

Buried treasure, huh? Hey, this was sounding better and better.

“Hank, you can be Jim Hawkins.” I saluted the captain and thumped my tail on the ground. “And Dwover, you can be . . . Billy Bones.”

Drover fluttered his stub tail and said, “Oh good, ’cause I sure like bones.”

“And now,” said Captain Long John Alfred, “our ship’s weady to sail. But how can we get y’all dogs into the ship?”

Hmmm. That was a problem, all right, because . . . well, dogs don’t climb trees. Or ships. We’re not climbers, don’t you see.

The captain thought about it for a long minute, and then he came up with an idea. He told Dwover and me to wait right there—Drover and me, that is—whilst he went to gather up some equipment. He returned ten minutes later with . . . my goodness, a length of rope and a five gallon bucket. He tied one end of the wope . . . uh, rope . . . to the handle of the bucket and . . .

Wait a minute, hold everything. He thought I was going to climb into the bucket so that he could haul me—ha ha. No thanks, pal. There are many things a loyal dog will do for his friends, but as far as me . . .

Sniff, sniff. My goodness, something inside the bucket smelled . . . sniff, sniff . . . pretty good. I, uh, felt it was my duty to stick my head into the bucket to check this out .

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